Walking the Line Between Guilt and Growth

Welcome to the unexpected third installment of the unexpected three-part series about parenting and money. Thanks to Pax’s broken arm and a lot of reader feedback, this has turned into a fantastic discussion. Over the past few days, I’ve received a lot of questions and wonderings from parents. Many share a situation relevant in their life, then ask if it’s perpetuating guilt or growth. In short, there are a lot of parents doing a lot of good parenting…..in less-than-ideal circumstances. I thought it would be worthwhile to share one common example, as it carries a lot of parallels to many different scenarios we as parents may find ourselves in.

Scenario: A teen driver gets a few speeding tickets, which inevitably results in the family’s auto insurance rates going up.

Healthy Option: Make the teen pay for some or all of the incremental insurance cost. This allows them to take ownership of the situation and models the adult reality that actions have tangible consequences. Growth can happen here and the teen feels some level of organic, external pain.

Neutral Option: The parents pay for most or all of the incremental cost and you never again bring it up in conversation as a way of reminding them of what it’s costing you. Mistakes were made, costs were incurred, and we all move on. There’s neither growth nor guilt.

Toxic Option: The parents pay for all of the incremental cost and periodically (or frequently) bring it up to the teen. It gets brought up whenever there’s conflict, the next time they make a mistake, when you want to illustrate how much you do for your kids, or when you need/want something from them. You “help” your teen by paying this cost, but then turn around and use it as a weapon to manipulate, control, and push guilt on them.

There are a million similar-but-different situations we encounter in our parenting journey, from the time our kids are toddlers to the time they are caring for us in our old age. All we can do is the best we can do, each step of the way. Parents, I feel for you. Life comes fast and it doesn’t stop. To make it even harder, every time we figure out this whole parenting thing, our kids develop into the next stage and the rules change once again. It’s a wild ride, but a beautiful ride.

You got this!